


late nights

by puertoricansuperman



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Barbara "Barb" Holland Lives, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 21:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16900119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puertoricansuperman/pseuds/puertoricansuperman
Summary: Nancy can’t sleep. Barb comforts her.





	late nights

“Nancy, come back to bed.”

Nancy closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. In through her nose, out through her mouth. She doesn’t flinch when an arm reaches out and wraps around her shoulders. She leans back, into Barb’s arms, and sighs.

“Is it the dreams again?”

The answer to that question is obvious, but Nancy nods anyway. She turns and looks into Barb’s eyes. Her best friend’s eyes. Her girlfriend’s eyes.

“I know it’s not real,” she breathes. With Barb watching her everything else feels far away, a little unreal, but she can still remember the dream. The darkness folding in around her on all sides. The cold, rancid smell. “When I’m there. It’s not the same. It looks the same. But I know it’s not real.”

Barb nods. Nancy closes her eyes again and tries her best to melt into Barb’s touch. She isn’t quite sure what emotion it is that’s running through her. It’s not fear. Not anymore. Exhaustion, maybe. Or shame.

“I can’t save you.”

On reflection Nancy thinks that it’s definitely shame. It’s the kind of feeling that drives her to pull away from Barb’s warm arms. The kind of feeling that makes her leave their shared bed in the middle of the night and sit up in the living room with goosebumps rising on her arms.

“You don’t have to,” Barb says, and Nancy shakes her head.

“No. In the dream. I can’t… I never save you. I’m always too late. Or distracted. I’m... hanging out with Steve and I don’t… I never even hear…”

Barb reaches around her again. Nancy lets her—what will pulling away do for her, now?—but she lowers her head. “And I can’t stop it.”

“You did stop it,” Barb says. She takes a deep breath of her own. “In real life. You saved me.” Nancy shakes her head.

“I can’t stop the dream. You… you stopped having dreams months ago.”

“Nancy, stop it.”

“Why? You’re the one who almost died! Why am I the one who—”

“What? Can’t get over it?”

There’s a new element in Barb’s voice that gives Nancy pause. She looks at her. There is a steel in Barb’s eyes, now, the look that says she won’t let anything hurt Nancy. Even if the thing threatening to hurt Nancy _is_ Nancy.

“You know you almost died, too,” Barb says. “I dream about that, sometimes.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It’s trauma.” Barb’s voice lowers as she says, “It’s all trauma,” with the voice of someone who has seen too much, who knows too much about the world, at too young an age. “We process it differently.”

It feels too much like an excuse. Something to stave off the guilt and fear and shame that are always roiling just beneath the surface. Nancy stares at the opposite wall and says, “Maybe.”

“Come back to bed.” Barb stands up from the living room couch and Nancy moves with her. They walk back up the stairs, down the hall, and into Nancy’s room, and they sit down again at the edge of the bed.

“I wish—” Nancy says, on impulse, and then stops. What is there to wish for that every survivor in Hawkins hasn’t asked for a million times already?

Barb pulls her down, ever so gently, so they’re lying curled together on one side of the bed. She murmurs, “We’re still here.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. She rolls back the tiniest bit, so she and Barb are resting against each other.

“We’ll be okay,” Barb says.

Nancy’s more cynical half objects to that statement. _We’re not okay,_ she thinks. _We’re not going to be okay anytime soon._ But she can’t say that to Barb. She won’t. If Barb wants to get better—to recover—to leave it all behind her and start a new life—who is Nancy to deny her that?

“Yeah,” she said, softly, and she closes her eyes. “Okay.”

They fall asleep in each other’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for day 3 of Sapphic September 2018, for the prompt: “Come back to bed.”


End file.
